The Newroz is the Persian and Kurdish new-year. With celebrations beginning on 21st March, my plan has been to arrive in Erbil by 20th March.

Hence, as you can see from information placed on Instagram and Facebook (@LuxAltius), I had started by leaving Geneva on 7th March, crossing successively Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria by train over four days. This might seem quite rapid, but in fact the relatively slow and intricate means of travel compared to other possibilities allowed me to gather numerous accounts from people along with a variety of recordings and pictures. For example, my two nights in Belgrade revealed the stark contrast between a city of cheerful atmosphere of amorous couples in the streets and chess players on city battlements with that of the massive crowd protesting every week against the authoritarian regime of the country’s President Aleksandar Vuěié.

Post Tenebras Lux Beograd

Post Tenebras Lux Beograd

Post Tenebras Lux Beograd

On 11th March I arrived in Istanbul, meeting up with Berivan, a Kurdish friend who is the local correspondent for the BBC and who I’d come to know during last summer’s bike ride from Basel to Istanbul. Almost immediately we had to cross the Bosphorous to catch a train to Ankara, going on to Tatvan, bordering Lake de Van at the limit of Turkish Kurdish area. Overall, it had taken 65 hours of train and eight hours of bus since Geneva enriched with numerous encounters, songs and dances whiling away the time in carriages.

We subsequently boarded a brand-new cargo boat in which we crossed over to the city of Van on the eastern side of the lake. This took place in an Arctic-like scenario of heavily snow-capped mountains amid a gusting salt-laden wind on this land-locked lake.

Post Tenebras Lux Van

Post Tenebras Lux Van

Post Tenebras Lux Van

Post Tenebras Lux Van

We had arrived in a country tensely charged politically. With municipal elections due nationally in Turkey at the end of March, the atmosphere is particularly strained here where the government’s Democratic Peoples’ Party candidate is pitted against that of the HDP Kurdish Party. The latter individual, along with others, having been forcibly replaced at the time of the 2016 supposed military coup.

This was the position from which I planned to cross the mountains which border the region south of here, gaining successively Siirt and then Diyarbakir.

There’s a heavy police and military presence in the area with numerous checkpoints. But it allowed me to take in the vision of the surrounding mountainous countryside. I expected the atmosphere to be even more electric in Diyarbakir, the symbolic and geographical capital of Turkish Kurdish area, the scene of frequent recent demonstrations.

Post Tenebras Lux Dance

Post Tenebras Lux Dance

Post Tenebras Lux Dance

In front of me stood immaculate mountains culminating at 3,600 metres. The weather heavy with snow still falling. Nobody could say just how passable the onward path might be.

It remained to be seen. I just hoped to be providing my next update once over the border in Iraki Kurdistan.